Little Girl Lost

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.

Chapter 4: In the Dark

Zach closed his eyes as his fingers danced over the keys. He was glad Serena had thought to take his keyboard along with everything else they had grabbed from his house. He had been in no state to think of anything.

Even though he couldn't hear her footsteps with his keyboard headphones on, he became aware of his partner standing behind him. He opened his eyes again, pulling the headphones off, seeing her there with a dressing gown over her pajamas. "Sorry, did I wake you?"

She shook her head. "I was awake. I can't seem to fall asleep." She left off mentioning that it was mostly because she was worried about him. "I was getting a glass of water and I saw the light was on."

Under normal circumstances, Zach would have immediately picked up on what she was trying to hide, but right then he was too distracted by the maelstrom in his own head. "I can't sleep either. Every time I try, I see Andi's face or I think I hear her calling for me."

She gently ran her hand over the back of his where it rested on the keys. "Does the music help?"

"It keeps me grounded in the present, but - no, not really," he admitted. "I can't get it out of my head, thinking about what could've happened. The blood on the backpack - damn -"

She drew her friend into her arms, her heart breaking for him. "I'm so sorry," she whispered helplessly, knowing it was all she could say. Any reassurance she could give would be hollow and meaningless, and he would know it was.

"I - I don't know how to do this," he said after a moment.

"No one does, Zach," she soothed. "What you're going through is horrible. No one is expected to be equipped to deal with it."

"No," he objected. "No, I mean - I mean I don't know how to face the things that hurt me. You know, you've never asked me about that seven-year-sabbatical I took."

She shrugged. "I wasn't even in the department then. I didn't think it had anything to do with me."

"It doesn't," he confirmed, indicating for her to sit on the small couch beside where he'd set up the keyboard, "but it has everything to do with me. Go ahead, sit, this may take awhile." She did, and he continued. "Well, it really started with 9/11. The night of the tenth, Danny and I ended up pulling an all-night stakeout trying to catch a particularly slippery suspect. We got him eventually, but by the time we made the arrest and got him to the station, it was after dawn and we'd been on shift for over twenty-four hours straight. Captain gave us the day off considering and we decided to stop for something to eat in a cafe before splitting up to head home - we were both starving and way too tired to even think of cooking. As it was, Danny almost signed his credit card slip upside down before the barista noticed and got it turned the right way." He couldn't help but chuckle at the memory, tainted though it was by the memories that surrounded it. "We were eating at a table next to the window, I was giving him a hard time for spending multiple hours during the stakeout complaining about the status of his divorce proceedings when I saw an odd shadow and heard a sound - I thought it sounded like a plane coming in close, but it was Lower Manhattan, miles from LaGuardia and further from JFK. I'm looking around to see what it is, and I - I was looking right at the towers when it happened."

"My God," Serena gasped. "How close were you?"

"About fifteen blocks," he replied. "Far enough to be out of the danger zone, close enough to clearly see what was happening. And we did. See it, I mean. It's hard to remember exactly, the whole day felt so surreal. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the scene, I was still staring when the second plane hit. And I - I remember hearing screams, and looking back I know that the people around me were panicking, but at the time I thought I could hear the screams of the victims themselves. I could tell there was a lot of pain in there."

Serena just nodded sadly. Her partner, she had learned long ago, was extremely sensitive to his environment, and whether or not he'd actually been able to hear the screams, she was sure that on some level he'd been completely aware of that pain.

"Danny finally got me to move, and we went and helped out however we could just like every other cop in the city that day. But I couldn't shake the images, the feelings. Not that day and not after. I'd finally start to forget and then I'd see a news article or a TV spot, or I'd look at the skyline and see that big empty hole where the towers had always been. After a month, I couldn't take it anymore, so I just left. Left the city behind with all its memories and didn't come back for seven years. It's the same thing I always did when things got too difficult to handle. When my parents had marital problems, I just spent more time at school and roaming the city - that's how that started, in case you've ever wondered. When Lenore had slipped so far that there was no hope of a rekindled relationship, I cut off all contact with her, bought the house, and gave notice at the apartment we'd shared. That's what I do, Serena. I run. Only now, I can't even do that. If I ran now, I'd be abandoning my daughter." He dropped his head into his hands. "I can't - I don't know how -"

She cut him off gently. "Come here."

Much as he had earlier that day, he complied almost automatically with her suggestion, moving from the re-purposed kitchen chair to join her on the couch. She turned to face him, drawing him into her arms. "I know there's nothing I can say or do to make this hurt any less," she whispered, "but if it helps at all, you don't have to go through it completely alone. Megan and I are here for you." She felt his shoulders hitch under her hand and realized he was nearly crying on her shoulder. "Shh, just let it out. It'll only hurt you more to hold all that pain inside."

"I don't think that's possible," he whispered hoarsely. "To hurt more than I do - now -" Then he broke down sobbing in her arms, releasing a veritable tidal wave of emotion that refused to be held back any longer.

Serena began to cry too; it hurt her just watching the agony her friend was being forced to endure. She held him close to her, rubbing his back as he continued to sob long after her own tears had dried up. By the time his outpouring of grief was spent, he was barely able to keep his eyes open.

"Come on," she said gently, standing up and pulling him to his feet with her. "You need to sleep."

"No," he objected, stepping away from her, heading back for the kitchen chair he'd been using with the keyboard. "I'll just...I'll just play awhile."

She pulled him back, stepping into his path at the same time. "You'll end up falling asleep on the keys."

"My prerogative." She didn't move, and he relented a bit. "I don't want to sleep right now. My waking thoughts are bad enough. I don't want to dream."

Of course he doesn't. "I don't blame you a bit," she soothed. "But you're out on your feet right now. You won't be able to fight it off much longer. You might as well be lying down when you fall asleep."

When he offered no further protest, she walked him back across the room to the futon she'd set up as a spare bed, covering him with a blanket as he lay down and sitting beside him until he succumbed to the inevitable sleep he'd already been on the edge of. Before heading for her own bed, Serena sent him a silent wish that he not dream too much.

xxxxxxxxx

"What's this war room for?" Declan Murphy asked, surveying the small conference room where his Sergeant and her partner had laid out more than a few files.

"Andrea Marquez," Nick explained while Olivia continued to hunt through the files. "Missing eight-year-old."

"This is a lot of space for a missing kid case - isn't it?" he asked belatedly. He often had to remind himself that while he had the senior rank, he had less experience in SVU than any of the detectives under his command.

"Usually," Olivia replied, finally looking up from all the papers. "But this one's particularly complicated. A lot of possible motives and no solid leads."

"How many motives are we talking about?" Murphy asked, puzzled. "This is a grade-school girl."

"We know," Nick confirmed, "but she's in the middle of a very complicated web. For one thing, there's the Park Strangler case."

"That psycho who murdered half a dozen witnesses so they couldn't ID him?" Murphy managed to put the last pieces together on his own. "Wait, I remember reading there was a young witness in that case. The media couldn't get enough of her. No one managed to snap a picture, but her name and testimony were all over the front pages. This is that girl?"

"Yeah, which sets up two possibilities already. One is that Thomas or an associate of his is behind this, and the other is that it's someone who read her name in the paper and developed some kind of obsession."

"You really think someone would kidnap her because she was in the news?" Murphy asked.

"Crazier things have happened," Olivia replied wryly. "It doesn't take much to push all the wrong buttons in some people. Someone reads a name in a paper and next thing we know they've conjured up some kind of relationship with her."

The Lieutenant was still shaking his head in disbelief. "You said there were a lot of possible motives. What are our other options?"

"Ransom, although we're close to ruling that out," she explained. "There is family money, but we're more than twelve hours in without a call. That's practically unheard of in a ransom snatch."

"Then there's the foster father himself," Nick added.

"He's a cop, right?"

"Yes," the detective confirmed, "and not just any cop either. He's got a long track record in Major Case and Anti-Crime before that. There's a long list of people who have a reason to want to hurt this guy."

"We're starting with the most recent ones," she put in. "He hasn't been Andrea's guardian for all that long, and it would be very difficult for anyone to find that out from even an intensive search, especially if they didn't know what they were looking for. And then -"

"Wait. There are more possibilities?"

"One more," Olivia said grimly. "According to everyone we talked to, Andrea was very timid and kept to herself. The teachers told us that she didn't play with the other kids very much, and sometimes she'd spend her time outside during recess and after-care just sitting by the fence and reading. It makes her the perfect target for a random snatch."

"So you're telling me that there are dozens of people out there with reasons to target this girl specifically, but there's a decent chance that the person who took her doesn't even have a personal motive?"

"That's the long and short of it, yeah."

He shook his head. "Okay, you two. Do what you need to, and don't be afraid to pull some extra manpower if you need it."

xxxxxxxxx

"This is awful." The sentiment of Heather Bryce's words was reflected in her face. "I can't believe it."

"How long have you been Andrea's caseworker?" Olivia asked.

"Over four years now, ever since she was removed from her biological mother." She bent over her drawers, browsing through the contents briefly before pulling out a hefty file. "This is hers. Here, initial contact date is March twelfth, 2009."

Nick whistled under his breath. "That's a lot of paper for one kid."

Heather sighed, nodding. "Eight homes in under five years, and even that doesn't really give you an idea of how chaotic some of that time was." She opened the file's top cover. "First was an emergency placement for the three weeks after she was removed, I don't even count that one in the total anymore. Then we placed her with a family, but that fell through after four months."

"What happened?" Olivia wanted to know.

Heather grimaced. "They claimed she was destructive, but - I found out after the failed placement that they lived by the motto 'don't child-proof the house, house-proof the children.'"

The two detectives exchanged incredulous looks that Heather couldn't miss. She smiled sadly. "I take it you two are parents?" They both nodded. "Well, then you'll understand that it was a lot easier said than done. They kept fragile objects and plants around as if they had no children and expected a four-year-old - and their three biological kids - not to damage anything. I wholeheartedly believe that Andrea was exhibiting curiosity, not destructiveness. So I placed her with another family, but ACS found out they were taking in children through multiple agencies without informing each agency of the others; they had a dozen kids in the house and this agency thought they only had two. So the state yanked their license six months after Andrea had moved in there, and several children including Andrea were sent to a group home. She stayed there for eight months until I found another home for her, but it turned out that one was no good either. They had some very, shall we say, outdated ideas of how girls should behave, which Andrea didn't agree with."

"Seems like this girl's had nothing but bad luck."

"That, Detective Amaro, is the understatement of the century. I removed her after three months when I witnessed a relevant argument between the mother and another girl in the home. After that, I wanted to do everything in my power to get her into a good placement, and it just so happened that there was an opening with a woman who'd been a foster mother for two decades with an excellent reputation." Heather smiled wistfully. "I'll never forget one home visit, a month after I placed her, finding her playing on a tire swing in the backyard with one of her foster brothers. I thought finally she had a home that would work for her. I intended to keep here there indefinitely, until she aged out if possible. Fourteen months after Andrea moved in, her foster mother keeled over in the kitchen with a heart attack."

"Oh, no," Olivia said sadly. "That must have been hard for her to see."

"She survived, thank God," Heather told them, "but she was in no shape to care for any children, let alone the six she had living with her. So that got Andrea another four months in group care, and then nine months with a family that looked picture-perfect and turned out to be rotten at the core. This past April, she nearly died of untreated appendicitis because they didn't take her to the hospital when she started showing symptoms. After which I found out that they treated her as free maid service."

"She never complained?" Nick asked, startled. "The one time my seven-year-old didn't want to dry the dishes for me, I think they heard her in the next county."

Olivia laughed despite herself at the mental image, and she could see that Heather Bryce was biting back a smile of her own. "I'm sure they did, but that's not Andrea. I don't know if it's personality or conditioning or a mix of both, but she doesn't complain. Every bad situation she was in I found out from someone else."

"Conditioning," Olivia repeated. "She was abused?"

Heather nodded an affirmative. "From what we can figure out, Andrea's mother treated her like a tool - use it when it's helpful, toss it aside when you're not using it. But unlike tools, children move, they get in the way, they cry, they seek attention. So she literally beat Andrea into compliance so she wouldn't have to think about her unless she wanted to."

An idea occurred to Nick. "Could Andrea's mother be behind the kidnapping?"

"I don't see how. That woman's parental rights were terminated during Andrea's first stay in the group home; she'd have no way of knowing the current placement. Besides, I don't know why she would. I mean, what would she get out of it?"

The look they shared this time was bemused. It was Olivia who broke the silence. "The motives for kidnapping aren't usually quite that straightforward."

"I'm sorry, I'm not explaining myself well. I know a lot about parental kidnappings, and I know they're usually full of nuances on top of nuances. But Linda isn't. To her, life is a transaction, it's all about what she can gain, and I mean that in a literal, material sense. Like I said." She shrugged. "I can't see her doing this. Parental kidnappings are usually emotional, and I remember thinking after spending five minutes in the same room with her that it was like her heart was a block of ice. No emotions at all. I met her a handful of times, and I never saw a thing to contradict my initial opinion."

"We'll take that into consideration." Nick stood up, reaching out to shake her hand. "Thank you for your time, Ms. Bryce."

"Don't thank me," she insisted. "Just find her."

xxxxxxxxx

"I see what she meant," Nick commented. "I feel cold just from looking into her eyes."

"Not to mention her attitude," Olivia agreed. "We tell her her daughter's missing and possibly in danger, and her reply is 'it's not my problem anymore'?"

"Unfortunately," he sighed, "being a shitty parent isn't a crime, especially if you don't have custody of the kid, and her alibi checks."

"Which means we forget her. And frankly, I'd just as soon not have to remember."

Just to be clear, while this chapter and the previous one did have a fairly substantial appearance by SVU, I still stand by what I said at the beginning; this is primarily a CI story. I just wanted to be able to go through some of the more logical points of the situation, and the investigating officers seemed like a better venue for that than the very emotional Nichols.

Pretty much everything in the first chunk of this is of my own creation. Promotional materials before Jeff Goldblum came on the show did mention that his sabbatical was a post-9/11 reaction, but the specific question of why was left open, so I just filled in those blanks.

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